Five Best VPN Service Providers

If you have a need to encrypt and secure your internet connection—whether you’re using an unsecured public Wi-Fi connection or are worried about an authoritarian government snooping your data—a VPN service is just what the doctor ordered. Here are the five most popular tools for the job.

If you’re unfamiliar with VPN services, the value behind a VPN is this: You encrypt all data from your local computer to the VPN endpoint, adding security to an otherwise insecure situation. A prime example is when you use an unsecured wireless connection (for example, at a cafe or a university) or when your government wants to control or spy on your internet activity (Egypt and China come to mind, but many examples exist world-wide).

VyprVPN is a service brought to you by Goldenfrog. Goldenfrog partners with Giganews, a well-known Usenet provider which has been around since 1994, and you actually get the VyperVPN service free if you subscribe to a Giganews platinum account. VyperVPN itself costs $US14.99/month for their plain PPTP service and $US19.99/month to upgrade to the professional version which includes L2TP/IPsec. These two protocols allow you to connect to their service from a wide range of devices and operating systems—the two standards work with everything from Ubuntu to Windows and from Android to iOS.

WiTopia’s entry level plan starts at $US39.99/year (PPTP only) and goes up to $US69.99/year, which includes PPTP and OpenVPN/IPSec VPN support. One of the things that makes WiTopia stand out from the crowd is that they have exit servers in an incredible 31 countries. This means that you are able to select which country or even which city your traffic appears to be coming from, which helps to get around some of that unseemly geo-lock content providers often put on their media. They include alternative ports as well as an SMTP relay for email should you need it.

StrongVPN offers exit points in an impressive 15 countries, though on cheaper packages you may only receive the ability to use one of them. Their plans start at $US7/month, but this restricts you to PPTP and 4 exit cities; to switch countries or add OpenVPN support you’ll need to pay extra fees. You can view all the different options on their packages page. StrongVPN is based in the US.

Ipredator is a Swedish VPN provider with a starting rate of €15 ($20.30 USD) for 3 months. It appears that currently PPTP is the only protocol supported, but OpenVPN support is in beta testing. It appears that their one exit point is in Sweden, which does have strong data and privacy protection laws. Their site is a bit sparse on details on their company and service, but our readers have picked them as one of their favourites so we have to go on their word.

The only one of the five contenders with a free option is proXPN. They have a custom Windows client which manages your network settings for you and also allows you to switch exit points, reconnect your VPN on disconnection and have it run on startup. The free account is limited to 1Mbit and only allows a United States exit; the pro account is $US5 a month or $US45 per year. If you upgrade to the pro account, there’s no bandwidth limit and you can choose between a United States or Netherlands exit. PPTP is not available by default but is available upon request. One of the downsides of proXPN is that their client is Windows-only; instructions are available from their support if you are connecting from MacOS X.

Honorable Mentions

Two software products worth mentioning that aren’t strictly services but received a lot of attention in the voting include: OpenVPN is a client which can connect to any VPN service and is a component of popular “roll your own” setups. If you have the technical know-how, you can set up your own PPTP or IPSec service out of your own home or business. Also LogMeIn Hamachi is a free tool and service for creating a point-to-point VPN network between computers. You could use Hamachi to share your internet connection on your home PC with a remote computer and have a very nice and secure connection.

@nichilas I have heard alot about hidemyass and now I am using purevpn can you tell which is better to unblock youtube. I have read HMA review at vpnranks, I am not good in these kin of technical issues.

I use strongVPN to watch stuff from Hulu, Netflix(so glad they don't verify if your card is from the US or not) and the BBC iPlayer. I got their $45/4cities deal and it is great, only down side is I have to manually change between a UK and US location each time I want to watch on BBC iPlayer and vice versa, but I really only do that for Doctor Who and with ABC now showing it within a week of it being shown in the UK, that isnt really an issue anymore :)

I tried setting up StrongVPN on an android 2.3 and it was a crazy experience . The setup guides, greeting emails and online pages are very poorly coordinated. Might be OK if you don't have a problem but gets chaotic if you can't connect first time. I gave up and cancelled.

Virtual Private Networks or VPNs work with the basic ‘Virtual Tunneling’ mechanism to enable the users to browse privately through dedicated connections, chosen IP address and server with the intention of protecting personal identity and location data. There are 5 best VPN for UK naming HideMyAss VPN, IP Vanish, Astrill VPN, Express VPN and Vypr VPN.

They use 1024bit SSL/TLS and blowfish, and OpenVPN as client software. Setup is dead easy, with the self extracting wizard to port the config files into OpenVPN.

The basic service is completely free, and with 100Gb of data allowed at a maximum of 500kbps. Though you do need to renew your certificate every month too if you're not willing to shell out for a premium account (which also ups your traffic and connection speed).

just for the record, hostizzle seem to have gone AWOL leaving users without service and still taking their money. I have had to open a Paypal dispute with them, their web contact and support no longer work and their e-mails bounce.

Only bothering to mention this as this review is on the first page of google results and didn't want enyone else to get stung.

WiTopia is where I went a couple of years ago when Conroy began doing the salesman work free for a few censorware vendors and those who would coopt government to close down information flow.
Their service is stable and doesn't add significant latency when I'm browsing. Most importantly, their support for email makes their service as transparent as any good ISP.
The access to censored sites has been invaluable in my research, and the large range of geographical servers makes it a snack to access public broadcasters in many countries.

I've been using ClearVPN http://www.clearvpn.net for the past 2 years on their dual UK and US plan (switching between the 2 countries is easy simply a click to disconnect from one and connect to the other). They use OpenVPN and I have been able to watch iplayer and netflix without issue from the middle east where I am based.

I've been using http://vpnv6.com for last 2 mths and they are the only provider so far I have used that can provide me with native IPv6 connectivity. Servers speed are fast and I can connect to VPN from my work behind a firewall and web proxy server.

I'm currently in Shanghai, using http://www.vpnninja.com for facebook and blogger for 6$ a month. Three days ago, the government blocked their servers and they immediately sent out e-mails saying they were working on it - a few hours later, everything was back up. The awesome service is why I would recommend this vpn to everyone!

The author didn't mention another great vpn service - kebrum.com.
I use for quite a long time and it never disappoints me. 2 simulteneous connections from one account - one of its features that makes it awesome

ProXPN is really good! Ive been using their free account before and my speed is now better after upgrading my account to premium but their free account is more than enough for me. I am also using another free vpn service http://www.yourfreevpn.com/ they just give you their openvpn config so you must know how to use openvpn if you want to try their service just like proxpn, they do not have bandwidth limits.

I also forgot to post the link to proxpn's registration page for free account since it is not posted on their website (Maybe I just did not see the link) Anyways here it is: https://proxpn.com/freemium.php

I have been using ClearVPN http://www.clearvpn.net for the past 2 years for UK and US VPN service. It's been great and stable and the speed has been fantastic, can't really recommend them enough. Works with BBC Iplayer, ITV, Channel 4, Netfix, Hulu etc..

We have just launched our latest update to our vpn servicee that we have called http://www.vpnmessenger.net that offers strong features that your viewers might be interested in using especially since we offer allot more features that a standard VPN provider. We are also very competitive on pricing also offering Prepaid solution that offer VPN for as low as 3 Euro for 120 hours useage. We would very much like that you consider us for you next review and in return if you like and also we would have no issue in providing free credit so you can test our service for your review.